I have refrained from pummeling you people with this stuff, but at this point, I think you might find it entertaining. The elections are two weeks away now. Care to cast your bets on what's gonna happen?

A. The Democrats tke control of the House.

B. The Democrats tke control of the Senate.

C. The Democrats tke control of BOTH the House and Senate.

D. Neither. Republicans retain control of both the Huuse and Senate.

I vote D.

I wager one of the nights alone in a seedy hotel room Kevin owes me.

__________________mburbank~ Yes, okay, fine, I do know what you meant, but why is it not possible for you to get through a paragraph without making all the words cry?

How can someone who obviously thinks so much of their ideas have so little respect for expressing them? How can someone who so yearns to be taken seriously make so little effort?!

In Ohio, a key state where polls and pundits are basically giving it to the D's, voting regulation and enforcement are in the hands of the R's. There ws NO prosecution for unequal distribution of voting machines and pre- election day purging of the voter regitsration rolls in heavily D preccincts. The oting rolls are being purged again, and while legal action is being taken, it seems unlikley to me that there will be any decision restoring the rolls in the next three weeks.

In several states, most voting chines are diebold, a company that is either 100% corrupt or %100 incompetent, insuring that no matter who wins there can be no confidence in the results.

I'm not saying there is an orchestrated conspiracy here, just a wink and nod Seargeant Schultz type deal. I'm also not saying that D's would actually win on the real numbers.

I'm saying that A.) Well never know, we pretty much can't know, and that's bad news for democracy and B.) I think the stakes are way, way, way too high for their not to be a significant amount of very ugly shit going on. I think D's are peffectly capable of dirty tricks. I just don't think they are as good at it.

I know, I know, tinfoil hat. But keep in mind, mine is just garden variety, bought at the dollar store, common folks aluminum foil, a opposed to the kind of high tech computerized headgear you need to combat vast, comptetent conspiracies. I think the brilliance of our current corruption is the realization that a whole lot of sleazy crap in a whole lot of places gets the job done just as well, and can never be rooted out. It's like the cell theory of terrorism. Act in small autonomous groups with a shared goal.

As if there weren't enough concerns about the integrity of the vote, a non-partisan civic organization today claimed it had hacked into the voter database for the 1.35 million voters in the city of Chicago.

Bob Wilson, an official with the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project - which bills itself as a not-for-profit civic organization dedicated to the correction of election system deficiencies - tells ABC News that last week his organization hacked the database, which contains detailed information about hundreds of thousands of Chicago voters, including their Social Security numbers, and dates of birth.

"It was a serious identity theft problem, but also a problem that could potentially create problems with the election," Wilson said.

A nefarious hacker could have changed every voter's status from active to inactive, which would have prevented them from voting, he said.

"Or we could've changed the information on what precinct you were in or what polling place you were supposed to go to," he said. "So there were ways that we could potentially change the entire online data base and disenfranchise voters throughout the entire city of Chicago."

Tom Leach, a spokesman for the Chicago Election Board, tells ABC News that the problem seems to have arisen because the city's database allowing voters to locate their voting precinct once asked voters for detailed information such as Social Security numbers.

Approximately six years ago, Leach said, when the website was updated - requiring only name and address - city computer experts "never cut the links to the Social Security numbers and the dates of birth."

Leach said he doubted the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project could have disenfranchised voters or wiped out the database, but he and the Election Board were very concerned and had taken steps to remedy whatever problems exist, including bringing in an outside computer forensic expert to verify that the database is secure and to ensure no one had already hacked the database.

"We're also making arrangements to remove the Social Security numbers," he added, and the Election Board was also alerting law enforcement to the problem as pointed out to them.

"Even though they could hack into the Web site, they couldn't hack into the voter file," Leach said. "The Web site feeds into a copy file, not the actual original file."

Leach said the issue had absolutely nothing to do with the city's electronic voting machines, which are manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems.

But Wilson counters that this is just one hole in a system that may be full of them.

"This is a part of the entire electronic voting program that we're depending on - computerized voter databases and electronic voting machines," Wilson said. "Any computer is subject to failure and security flaws and we have seen in electronic voting hundreds of news reports about dozens and dozens of jurisdictions where there are problems."

If Republicans keep both chambers the Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves. This is not a realigning election, it's an anti-incumbency thing. This will not build a generation of Democrats.

If the Dems. can't win in this atmosphere, they'll have to re-think some things. Maybe take some time off.

Races are tightening up right now, statistically. That isn't Diebold's fault, that's simply the GOP base beginning to realize that the guy they have might suck, but he's waaay better than the suckier guy who may win if they don't fall in line.

I still think you'll see a Democratic House, but nobody will have a clear majority I don't think.

And clearly, if the GOP keeps both chambers, we'll need to start looking a little bit closer at the Jews and the corporations, being all corporaty in their corporate towers doing corporate stuff. As for the Jews, well they'll get theres by God.